August 01, 2007

Heather nudges (more like slugs; that's what it can take) me awake from my slumber. She says that she is sure that we need to go to the hospital. What she thought were Braxton-Hicks that had been going on since midnight-30 she is now convinced that they are so NOT. We laughed. This is August 1. Jackson could not really come on his due date. That is just rarely heard of.

So we get up and get dressed and head over to the hospital prepared to turn around and come home. We'll sure enough they say Heather is not in labor; she hasn't even dialated. But they want her to hang around a little while to watch her. OK, done this too.

We'll then shortly after that Heather says that she feels like she is going to be sick. The nurse turns and says "Oh, honey. your not going to be sick."Silly nurse. When Heather says that she is going to be sick, believe her. Sure enough Heather begins to get sick. That's when we knew we were not going home and back to bed. She went from 0 to a 3 like that.

Forward a while later and Heather is all happy with her epidural. I notice her lips are blue and her hands are cold. She is having issues from the epidural. Nice. So she in given drugs to increase her blood pressure. One problem. They cross over. So Jackson's pulse goes up higher than they want. They wait; we wait. They watch; we watch; Repeat. They come in and say "You're going to have a c-section." Heather was so happy; she was done with the whole labor thing. They go to page her doctor. No answer. They page again. No answer. They call his house. No answer. They call his cell. No answer. Turns out he went out of town for the weekend and did not check out. Nice. They take Heather in at 4 and 8 years ago at the time this posts, Jackson was out and making his presence known.

8 years later and the trials of asthema and allergies (and how many prescriptions along the way) and the the fun orWii and baseball/t-ball. Growing up, lost teeth, starting school and now in third grade (we'll just chalk 2nd grade up as a trial), getting up in front of the whole church and declaring your faith and being baptised. Many happy times.

Heather took Jackson back to the infectious disease (ID) specialist today and almost all of immune system tests came back normal! Two weeks ago they went for initial visit and they did a blood draw on him--6 vials of blood. That is not a blood draw, that is a full-fledged donation. The kid didn't even get juice and cookies after that!

The one test that came back abnormal was one that we expected - the one part of the immune system that reacts to allergens. His level ere very high (930 and normal is 0-60), which was expected with his history of allergies/asthma/ezcema.

But the immune system tests that analyzed his ability to fight infection all came back normal!! "The soldiers are there and on duty," according to the doctor. In other words, his immune system is healthy and functioning as it should.

The doctor's explanation for Jackson's recurring infections is simply, if his skin has breaks in it, skin infections will follow. We must keep his skin healthy if we want to stop the cycle. The ID doctor said that he was glad we were are going to National Jewish Medical in September. He said the team at NJ can help us find strategies to keep Jackson's skin as healthy as possible.

Now who am I again?

A little gem...

Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. We're always exploring and experimenting. Keep moving forward -Walt Disney